A method according to the generic part of the main claim is known from DE 30 29 667 A1. Herein is described the production of an IC module for chip cards using injection molding technique. According to the method, a carrier film having on its up-per side a contact layout and on its underside contacting surfaces corresponding to the contact layout has a semiconductor circuit disposed thereon which is connected to the contacting surfaces. The semiconductor circuit is then molded in an injection mold with a molded body. The molded body is then punched-out of the carrier film and forms an IC module which can subsequently be mounted in a chip card. The known method is based on the concept of producing a chip card by first producing a chip module and then mounting it in a prepared card body.
This concept is the usual method for producing chip cards and is well described, e.g. in the book “Vom Plastik zur Chipkarte” by Y. Haghiri and T. Tarantino, Hanser-Verlag, Munich, 1999. For producing card bodies for chip cards, the book explains in detail the injection molding technique, among other things. Under the designation “in-mold technique” it describes an injection molding method by which a movable die having a previously produced chip module fastened to its head is placed in a mold such that the chip module protrudes into the mold cavity enclosed by the mold halves. The mold cavity with the chip module is then filled by injecting encapsulating material through a laterally disposed injection channel. The result is an injection molded card body with an embedded chip module.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,575,375 B1 further discloses a method for producing particularly small SIM modules by using an injection molding technique. Accordingly, a plurality of chip modules placed in a matrix array on a carrier film are put in an injection mold and overmolded so as to form a panel comprising the plurality of chip modules. The chip modules contained in the panel are then cut out so as to yield a data carrier in a desired form. The method combines favorable injection molding production with a great freedom of design for the data carriers to be produced. However, it requires the handling of an intermediate product not usual in the production of comparable data carriers and necessitates a corresponding adaptation of the machines and tools used.
In view of an increasing miniaturization of electronic terminals, ETSI (European Telecom Communications Standards Institute) is currently discussing the introduction of a new standard for chip cards, referred to hereinafter as “mini plug-in”, which has further reduced dimensions compared with the standard for SIM cards.